Nutrition
The keto weight-loss diet that is having a surge of popularity may actually be shortening people’s lives.
The keto weight-loss diet that is having a surge of popularity may actually be shortening lives.
Question:
People I know have lost a lot of weight on the keto diet and claim to feel amazing. I worry about the long-term health effects of such a drastic diet, so haven’t tried it. What’s your opinion? I take your point that we’d be better off if we didn’t think thinner was better.
YAnswer:
ou’re right to worry. The keto – or ketogenic – diet has been dominating water-cooler talk in workplaces this year, yet studies of such lowcarbohydrate diets sound alarm bells. Attendees at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in August, for instance, heard that very low-carb diets may, in fact, be killing us. Despite the recent hype, people have been eating ketogenic diets for nearly 100 years, although not to lose weight. Rather, they’ve been successfully using it to treat drug-resistant epilepsy, especially in children.
The basis of the keto diet for weight loss is that when our body doesn’t get enough carbohydrates, it starts burning fat for fuel. This process is called ketosis and production of ketones is the end result. A keto diet deliberately induces ketosis.
We can probably thank
American Dr Robert Atkins for introducing the very-low-carbohydrate diet to the masses of people trying to lose weight. The Atkins diet fad of the early 2000s involved a strict introductory two-week ketogenic phase before switching to a low-carbohydrate regime.
In keto diet-land, some followers restrict their carbohydrate intake to 15-30g a day, but others allow themselves up to 50g. To put that in perspective, a medium-sized banana has 23g of carbs, so that would be your daily allowance on a strict keto diet. The rest of the diet consists mostly of meat, fish, eggs, cheese, butter, oil, cream, green leafy vegetables and nuts. Grain products including breads, pasta, flour and rice, legumes such as beans, potatoes and other starchy vegetables, and many fruits are completely off the menu.
There’s no question the keto diet